Something Else Press: A Love Letter to the Future

An oft-repeated truism about Dick Higgins is that his profile is eclipsed by his influence. He remains little-known, despite authoring countless books, coining the term Intermedia, as well as co-founding Fluxus and the Something Else Press, one of the most important publishers of artists' books, ever. In just over a decade, the Something Else Press published almost fifty books by some of the most luminary artists and writers of the twentieth century: Gertrude Stein, John Cage, Ray Johnson, Dieter Roth, Bern Porter, Emmett Williams, Robert Filliou, George Brecht, Claes Oldenburg, Merce Cunningham, Marshall McLuhan, Daniel Spoerri, Brion Gysin, Ian Hamilton Finlay, among many others.

Tomorrow night at Printed Matter - in an event titled Something Else Press: A Love Letter to the Future - three contemporary publishers discuss Higgins' influence and legacy:

James Hoff is an artist and co-founder and publisher of Primary Information, a non-profit arts organization devoted to publishing artists’ books and art historical documents, including two reprints of SEP titles (Fantastic Architecture and An Anthology of Concrete Poetry) as well as the complete Great Bear Pamphlets.

Lisa Pearson is the founder and publisher of Siglio Press, a press dedicated to publishing uncommon books that live at the intersection of art and literature. Siglio Press published the reprint of Ray Johnson's Something Else Press title The Paper Snake, and last fall published the first major book on Higgins since his death in 1998.

Damon Krukowski is a musician (he is half of Damon & Naomi, who themselves are two-thirds of Galaxie 500), poet (Afterimage, The Memory Theater Burned), writer and critic. He has written about sound and art for Artforum, Bookforum, The Wire, and Pitchfork. He is the co-publisher of Exact Change which publishes experimental literature emphasizing 19th and 20th century avant-garde.

The three will discuss Higgins’s influence on their own publishing projects, as well as "the extraordinary lineage of the Something Else Press in the wider publishing community, and how SEP continues to ignite an expansive field of possibilities."

The event takes place April 30, 2019, from 5 to 7pm.